No dream-Weaver

A nightmare at Safeco Field for Jeff Weaver. It’s tough to see a guy self-destruct like that on the mound. Plenty of you are wondering what the Mariners will now do with him. My guess is he’ll head to the bullpen right away and start working on some of the multitude of problems he ran into tonight. The Mariners have an off-day on Monday and were going to in all likelihood skip Weaver’s next start anyway since Felix Hernandez is due to pitch next Friday. Now, they can do just that, let him try to resolve his problems on the side and use him in some long relief situations that might come up when the Mariners play some consensus contenders next week.
After that, if the coaching staff believes the problems to be resolved, they can throw Weaver back out there against the Tigers in Detroit. Remember, that’s a team he did a pretty good job against in the World Series in what must seem like a lifetime ago for him. It is still too early to completely give up on a guy being paid $8.3 million. A guy who has proved himself a competent major league starter at times. But time is running out for Weaver. At the very least, he just lost his next start. Now, it’s up to him to earn another.
The way the team gets through the rest of this game, win or lose, is still very important. Sean White and Eric O’Flaherty just picked up some innings but there are several more still to go, Seattle down 8-3. Yes, this game is pretty much over. But as we mentioned earlier, with the bullpen shorthanded already, there is more at stake than just this one game. Somebody’s got to carry the Mariners through the rest of this one. You cannot go to Brandon Morrow, or Chris Reitsma, or risk over-using George Sherrill. Weaver’s outting was about the worst possible result from that perspective. It could really hurt this team if the back-end bullpen guys can’t carry them through this.